The problem is that they're telling us to look for greatness in all the wrong places. Because if there's one thing that the city of South Bend has sh… - Pete Buttigieg

But I was admittedly frustrated after Iowa. The conspiracies multiplied. Someone noticed that our campaign had purchased software from the same software company that made the flawed app in Iowa — enough to send the Twittersphere into a tailspin. A staff member on my campaign was married to someone who ran a company that invested in the company that made the app — clear evidence! No one really took the trouble to explain what all these tidbits were supposed to amount to, but then, conspiracy thinking is not obliged to answer questions; it merely asks them, insinuating.

The top priority of the terrorist — even more important than killing you — is to make himself your top priority. This is why protecting ourselves from terrorist violence is not enough to defeat terrorism, especially if we try to achieve safety in ways that elevate the importance of terrorists and wind up publicizing their causes.

At its best, the practice of politics is about taking steps that support people in daily life — or tearing down obstacles that get in their way. Much of the confusion and complication of ideological battles might be washed away if we held our focus on the lives that will be made better, or worse, by political decisions, rather than on the theoretical elegance of the policies or the character of the politicians themselves.